Centives is launching a new series of articles where we examine the guests that appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Centives went through the episodes ofthe show and for each guest noted the date that they appeared on the show, the field that they were best known for, their date of birth, and their gender. We decided to pick these four attributes because, quite honestly, they were the easiest things to record. But these attributes when taken in the aggregate help paint a broad picture of the types of guests that Jon Stewart likes to bring onto the show.

It was not always an easy process. The most difficult decision was figuring out which field each of the guests belonged to. Should we classify Ron Howard as a director or an actor? Is Bill O’Reilly a journalist or a television host? These were, at times, subjective decisions and there are legitimate disagreements to be had with some of our decisions. Distinguishing between actors and comedians was perhaps the most difficult aspect of this analysis. Most comedians have gone on to star in movies and Centives had to make a judgment call on whether they were better known for their acting credentials or their comedy work. Another hotly contested category was journalists versus authors. Many authors write books that provide a journalistic analysis, and deciding which category they fit into was a complicated process.

The field ‘political’ was used for a range of individuals both elected and appointed; it often times included people who became political figures against their will. Jenny Sanford is a notable example. Whenever there were multiple guests on the show separate entries were created in the database for each guest. However when musicians came to perform on the show, only the name of the band, and the field ‘musician’ was recorded. Multiple entries were not created for each of the band members, and neither their age nor their gender was recorded, even if it was an all-Female group such as the Spice Girls.

Every Friday, Centives will publish a new article analyzing the guests that appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in a calendar year, starting with the show’s inaugural season in 1999. After we’ve finished examining all of the years on an individual basis we’ll publish a broader article evaluating the trends over time of the guests that appear on the show. Find an index of all the articles below:

2 thoughts on “The Evolution of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Over the Years”

I think this is extremely interesting, and I’m writing a tangentially related blog post. I was wondering if you created that image with all the slices of Jon Stewart images, and if so, could I use that photo and give you credit?